


what you deserve

by 14winters



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, brief mention of blood and death, still learning tagging I'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 05:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10712823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/14winters/pseuds/14winters
Summary: After being held hostage by Jack Brunelle, Joan attempts to ward off Sherlock's concern. She fails.





	what you deserve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Inevitable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inevitable/gifts).



> This fic begins in the hours after the final scene of 5x13, when Joan shaves Sherlock’s head as payment to Everyone.

When she found Sherlock in the kitchen, eating leftover pasta, she had a few seconds to study him before he looked toward her. He still wore his buttoned up shirt, but the top two buttons were undone. He profile was only slightly less stern than usual, the consumption of food alone making the tense muscles of his shoulders relax only a bit, a couple lines disappearing from his forehead. But when he turned to look at her, the furrowed brow returned.

“Watson,” he said with his usual energy, holding up his bowl of pasta. “I left some for you in the microwave.”

“Thanks,” she said, pushing her damp hair over her shoulder as she made her way across the kitchen. After settling down across from him with her hot food, her phone sitting with its screen dark next to her, the customary question finally came from him.

“You had no nightmares last night as a result of our most recent case.”

He did not voice it as a question. He usually didn’t, preferring to appear he already knew exactly what was going on, when it was usually the opposite. At least when it came to her. She knew that unsettled him.

“No,” she said, not looking up, concentrating on her food.

“Yet you haven’t resumed your normal social duties,” he said, and peripherally she saw him nod toward her cell phone, which he would have of course observed she’d only been using to tell the time since they’d resolved the Trimble case.

“They’re not duties, Sherlock,” she said patiently, taking another bite of pasta and resisting the urge to pick up her phone.

“You are usually eager to resume the arduous task of keeping up with friends outside our work once a case has been successfully concluded,” Sherlock continued, as if she hadn’t spoken.

“It’s been four hours,” she said, finally looking up at him with more than a hint of irritation in her face.

He tilted his head at her, a habit he’d picked up from her in recent months that usually meant he was about to _try_ giving advice. Hard emphasis on _try_.

“You share our cases with some of your friends, Watson, I’ve noted. But this one you’re keeping quiet. Will you tell me why?” he said, his voice softening, his eyes moving away at the last question.

“I would think nearly getting shot during a hostage situation would be enough explanation,” she said, taking a particularly large bite of pasta so she could concentrate on chewing and not the expression changing on Sherlock’s face. (It went from curiosity and mild worry—the latter such a foreign expression on him—to that hard focus he reserved for moments he was particularly angry about something. It didn’t take much to guess the source of his anger this time.)

He was waiting. She finished chewing and swallowing. Took a sip of water. Didn’t look at him, at least not directly.

“It’s not something my friends want to hear about. And it’s not something I want to talk about,” she said, glancing toward her phone, her fingers now itching to pick it up, even though she had no intention of contacting anyone.

“To the latter question, why?” Sherlock said, his voice hardened with his focus now. She bit the inside of her cheek and suppressed a sigh.

“You know why. The same reason you don’t want to talk about Oscar, or your father, or Moriarty, or Kitty. It—” She broke off, her glance at his face making her pause.

She set down her fork and dropped both hands into her lap, knowing how much they each paid attention to haptics. She clasped her hands tightly together out of his view, and looked straight at him. His lack of hair didn’t make him look younger or older to her. Only more…exposed. There had always been a manic energy about him. Now it was as if that energy had been rearranged, but not dissipated. They were both readjusting.

“What do you want me to say, Sherlock? That I was scared? I was. That I regret the work we do together? No, I don’t.” Her words came out evenly, with her customary calm, but nothing in Sherlock’s expression was satisfied. He was still angry.

He raised his right hand, half clenched, near his face. The motion showed remnants of a coping gesture—he wanted to block it out, cover his face. His eyes strayed, off to the side. His hand unclenched and ran stiffly over his bald scalp, the sensation still strange to him.

“I don’t seek reassurance, Watson,” he said, his words as stiff as the rest of him. He didn’t shift his gaze from the window to her right, but nor was he focused on it.

“I seek quite the opposite, actually,” he added, glancing to her once before his gaze returned to some spot of darkness between the windowpanes.

She let her confusion show, and eventually he looked back at her, his right hand now a fist on the table, his left no doubt fidgeting with a button on his shirt out of her line of sight. She knew by the way his shirt shifted against him with the small movements.

“You do not look for comfort from others, Watson,” he said, almost too quietly, his mouth drawn into a harsh line. She could see the veins in his hand as he clenched his fist tighter. She blinked once, her gaze returning to his with the beginnings of understanding moving between them.

“I know it is not because you don’t need it,” he added, his chest rising noticeably with a deep breath.

She tilted her head unconsciously as she considered her reply. “I’m alright, Sherlock. I don’t need comfort from anyone. I just want the subject dropped.”

She let the last words hang heavily between them. He looked at her for a long time, assessing, trying to deduce something, and for once she couldn’t guess what. She frowned at him, before looking down at her plate and continuing to eat.

“You are protecting me,” he said suddenly, making her look up mid-chew. He was leaning back in his chair, with his chin raised. It was a position of self-satisfaction, but his expression wasn’t the least satisfied. His shoulders and forehead still showed the tense lines of anger. Or at least frustration. Right now the distinction was difficult for her.

“What are you talking about?” she said, her mind strangely blank. She had no rejoinder for him.

“You don’t want me to see you hurt, so you refuse to feel it,” he said, the volume of his voice growing, his tight fist rising to punctuate his words.

She put down her fork again. Her heart was pounding unsteadily, and she couldn’t focus on a reply. She looked down, memories coming unbidden into her mind. She had to concentrate to block them. The sharp smell of vodka and blood in her nose, the reek of male sweat and gunpowder. And a more recent memory, of warm brown skin going cool, the cold sweat on her brow, the evidence of another death running through her mind like so many facts in a textbook. Hemlock. The symptoms were all there.

“Watson.” His voice broke in, much closer than she remembered. She blinked several times, focusing again on him. He hadn’t moved.

“Nothing happened. He didn’t shoot me, he didn’t shoot anyone. He wouldn’t have killed me,” she said, her voice revealing a detached calm that was achingly familiar.

Sherlock got up from his chair and walked around the table to her. She couldn’t pinpoint the way he moved, what it meant. He was just there, next to her. On her left, like he often was. He knew how reliant she was on her right hand. She was not ambidextrous like him.

“Watson,” he repeated, his voice both soft and loud. It was a rare moment that Sherlock could be commanding and gentle at the same time. She looked up at him. The anger and frustration were gone. Instead he looked at a loss. Sad. She felt an unclassifiable anger rising in her at the sight.

“What do you need?” he asked her, his look almost hopeful. But he held a great deal back. Both his hands were fists at his sides, he was trying very hard not to rock on his heels. The very lack of movement drew her eyes to his feet. He had taken off his shoes, and his socks were an absurd mix of orange, blue, and green stripes.

She picked up her phone and stood up before her courage failed her. “I need you to drop this,” she said, briefly facing him, their bodies less than a foot apart. He met her eyes with a resolve she didn’t try to read. She turned away before another thought could cross her mind, moving to walk around him and out of the kitchen.

But something touched her arm, an unfamiliar force holding her back. She looked down. It was Sherlock’s hand, loosely grasping her forearm.  

An electric energy seemed to course through her limbs, stemming from the warmth of his hand against her skin. He’d never reached out to touch her.

She couldn’t move. She could barely force herself to look from his hand to his face. When she finally met his eyes, her pulse seemed to reach her fingertips. There was nothing but gentleness in his expression. An understanding and tenderness she didn’t want to process.

“Watson, I am here if you need me. Know that,” he said, his hold on her arm tightening only briefly before he let go. The loss of his warmth was not something she responded to consciously. Something else told her to reach for him, and it did not question how he would react, how she would regret, how she would punish herself later. She took his hand in hers and drew his eyes back to hers.

The wall encasing her emotions was shaking from its foundations, but she could not let it fall. He didn’t understand.

“I can’t, Sherlock,” she said, looking down as she spoke, unwilling to meet his eyes in the same moment she would deny him. Deny him something he wanted, but didn’t need. Neither of them needed it.

But her head was so close to his shoulder, both of them without shoes so she barely reached his collarbone. It was too easy to just…lean her forehead against him, his warm fingers still entwined with hers. He smelled of pasta and over-brewed coffee and that underlying old-book-and-wood-smoke scent that seemed to cling to all his clothes. His hold neither loosened nor pulled away from her. She took a slow breath, closing her eyes, cursing the tears that wanted to escape them.

His other hand came up to awkwardly rest on her back. He rubbed his hand slowly up and down, and in his awkwardness she felt he was feeling every stiff and twisted muscle just beneath the surface, and wishing he could smooth them all away.

“I’m sorry, Watson,” he whispered, and she could feel his breath stirring her hair. She nodded wordlessly, keeping her eyes closed, cherishing his warmth for a few more quiet seconds before she pulled away. She told herself she imagined the hesitancy in his touch as she took her hand from his.

She turned her back to him as she hastily wiped her eyes. Facing him again, she saw him take his cell phone from his pocket. He glanced up at her and gave her a half-smile, or the closest he could come to a half-smile that wasn’t quite a wince of…regret? Sympathy? She wasn’t sure.

“I will invite Mary over. Few tips on won tons I wanted to ask her about.” He muttered the last under his breath, scrolling through his contacts and moving to collect their dirty dishes at the same time.

She watched him, a confused smile coming unwittingly onto her face. “I’ll make tea,” she said. Unconsciously she moved the fingers of her right hand, slowly clenching and unclenching. She could still feel his touch, as if his hand had left traces on her skin. He passed her with the dirty dishes, shoving up his sleeves and turning on the water just as he got her mother on the phone. She kept smiling to herself as she retrieved the honey for their tea.


End file.
